Norwegian agtech company Monil has launched its virtual fencing system in the U.S., initially targeting Midwest cattle operations from its Kansas City base. Weighing just 2.2 pounds, the compact, solar-powered collar is claimed to be the lightest on the market and requires no tower infrastructure – running entirely on existing cellular networks. Beyond virtual pasture containment, the collar tracks each animal’s location, grazing behavior, activity and rumination while alerting producers to changes that could indicate heat cycles. Producers can start with as few as six collars under a subscription model, backed by a five-year warranty. Since 2022, Monil has sold tens of thousands of collars enabling more than 100 million grazing hours across Europe.
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A part of the Merck Animal Health portfolio, SenseHub® Dairy is a full-solution monitoring ecosystem that continuously analyzes calf and cow behavior and performance data.
MSU Extension recently explored how large dairies are using Cattle Care’s AI-powered camera system to monitor employee actions in the parlor. Their conclusion is the technology works best when paired with quality human interactions. For example, at Bad Axe Dairy in Michigan (4,000 cows, 35 employees), co-owner Cindy Tevoortwis offers performance bonuses tied to the software’s employee scores rather than somatic cell counts, since employees can’t control all SCC factors. Similarly, Mike Blessy of Leatherbrook Holsteins in Georgia (9,000 cows, 120 employees) says milker scores have improved and the software reports make meetings more productive: “If you want to score high—and we want you to score high—this is what you need to do.”
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Technology scales best when it standardizes how work gets done. By documenting outcomes, standardizing workflows and giving continuous feedback, a good system ensures protocols are followed the same way.
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Rumin8 has developed a novel compound or “prodrug” that remains inactive when consumed but converts to the methane-inhibiting bromoform inside a cow’s rumen through natural digestive processes. Laboratory trials achieved total elimination of methane emissions, while a preliminary animal study in Australia showed reductions of enteric methane up to 86 percent. The company says the approach could reduce costs and enhance scalability of methane inhibition compared to delivering bromoform directly through feed or water, and patents have already been filed on the new platform.
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Halter has launched calving detection capability on its virtual fencing collars. Using existing collar behavior data, the app alerts farmers when a cow shows signs of calving, helping them prioritize which animals to check first across multiple mobs. Farmers can also pause the collar’s virtual grazing controls on cows with triggered alerts, allowing them to move freely onto fresh pasture to calve. New Zealand dairy farmer Aaron Fisher called it the best feature the company has rolled out in his four years using the system, noting near perfect accuracy in detecting calving so far.
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News reports were summarized from original sources with artificial intelligence (AI) and edited by the author.
Projected profitability for the next 12 months for two dairy herd sizes DECREASED in recent profit projections from ZISK.
ZISK is a profit projection smartphone app that tracks individual dairy farm profitability based on current CME board prices. Projections for a 1,000-cow dairy producing an average of 80 pounds of milk per cow and a 2,500-cow dairy producing an average of 85 pounds of milk per cow are provided.
12-month dairy farm profit projections (as of July 30, 2026):
1,000-cow dairy = $195,300 (DOWN about $96,700 in the last two weeks)
2,500-cow dairy = $1.214 million (DOWN about $239,000 in the last two weeks)
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